


Marble, Cracking

by therjolras



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Character Deaths, Gen, Insanity, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, alternate universe-- modern, enjolras alone was unharmed, enjolras goes crazy, fatherly love my ass, les miserables-- alternate universe, psychotic depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-05
Updated: 2013-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-25 16:03:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/955068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therjolras/pseuds/therjolras
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"[...] Enjolras alone was unharmed"</p>
<p>Enjolras as the only man (or so he assumes) to escape the barricades, after which he goes crazy and winds up in the loony bin. Seeing dead people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“No, monsieur. This way.”

“But everyone else is going that way.”

“No they’re not, monsieur.”

They told stories about that one inmate. The one who wore an orange jumpsuit instead of a straightjacket. The one who made speeches to empty rooms, speeches that chilled anyone who listened to the bone in terror or filled them with fire. They’d had to keep him away from the inmates, because he kept stirring them up into a frenzy. And when the lights went out at night, he wept.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The doctors diagnosed him twice: Once with post-traumatic stress, and once with psychotic depression. The officers didn’t ask further. How anyone could even get in the room with him was beyond them. The moment they’d stepped foot in the doorway, he’d flattened himself against the wall, but when they’d tried to go any further he’d launched himself at them with a bone-chilling roar. The door had slammed shut in his face.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They said he’d been dragged away from the riot calm and cold and terrifying, unharmed but covered in blood. “Not mine,” he’d said softly. “Yours.” That night in prison he’d sat up and stared for hours. Then he’d started talking. He talked all night, the inmates said. “It sounded like there was, like, ten people in there with him.” “Get him out of here, man. Just get him out of here.” He even talked in his sleep, after the first night. He murmured names. Speech fragments. Places that no longer existed, or were drenched in blood. Once or twice, he laughed, and he spoke like he was hearing one side of a conversation with a friend.

“What’s the betting the historians will misspell your name?” He called, and laughed, but the tears were streaming down his sleeping face.

~~~~~~~~~

His father had visited him in prison, right after he was admitted. Monsieur Enjolras the elder was a tall man, charming in appearance, with square shoulders filling the jacket of a tailored grey suit that probably cost more than a common-made working man made in a year. Looking at them, one could see that they were so close... and yet so different. Enjolras the younger was slight, bony-thin from days so obsessed with school and revolution that he’d forgotten to eat, several inches shorter than his father, his mass of golden curls unruly and overgrown and falling into blue eyes overflowing with fire. Enjolras the older was in the peak of health, his own fair hair streaked with grey and cut in perfect order. His eyes were blue, but cold and calculating. But there was the suggestion in his expression that suggested where the younger’s key trait had come from: the charming smile that could turn terrible at any moment.

“Hello, my son,” he said. His voice was soft, but Enjolras the younger skittered away and pressed his back against the wall. “You’re not my father,” he said.

“I am cut to the quick,” Enjolras the father said dryly. “Listen closely. You need not be trapped here. I can get you out of here, take you home. Where it’s safe.”

“Home?” Enjolras the younger stammered. “With... you and mother? At the mansion?”

“That’s right, son. I’ve got friends in the government. They can let you out of here without a trial, let you go free so long as you go underground. I can take you home, away from here. You don’t have to leave France, just pretend to. Defect, even. Swear to never do it again, get a paper gold star, hide yourself away. Your mother and I won’t run the risk of implication. All will be well.”

“No,” Enjolras murmured. “It won’t.”

He wanted to. He truly wanted to. He wanted to go home, to the house on the hill, where he wouldn’t have to see his father if he didn’t want to and he could see his mother all he wanted. Where no one would find him, where he could hide in his books and try again. But he couldn’t.

“It wouldn’t be well, sir,” he said. “What would it be, other than running away? Abandoning the people I fight for? Leave them to their anguish while I live in the sort of squalor I swore to relieve? Betray everything I’ve ever stood for?” In his element, Enjolras found some of his confidence returning. He stepped away from the wall, facing down his father. “Forget it, sir. I’d rather spend the rest of my life in prison.”

“Or an asylum,” his father said. “I’ve seen your file. You’ve been hallucinating. Talking in your sleep. Did something crack back there at the riot? Something... unhinge?” He touched the center of Enjolras’ forehead with his first finger, and the touch was cold. Enjolras batted it away. “I’ve been through battle and death, sir. Haven’t you heard of post-traumatic stress? It happens to plenty of people.” _Not to me. It can’t have happened to me. I’m alright, I’m alright--_

“Without a single scratch,” Monsieur Enjolras said. “How did that happen? Every other man who defended that barricade is dead, and you come out of it completely unscathed. How is that, boy? Have you, say, and invisible forcefield defending you from harm? Is your rank as commander so great that others are willing to throw their lives to the four winds that you might survive? It sounds like cowardice to me.” He paused, his eyes boring into his son’s.

“Don’t--” Enjolras said, but his father kept talking. “That’s all you are now, son. A coward. A boy who did not think to understand what he is committing to when he throws up a barricade and challenges the government all the way to its peak. You are a failure, boy, and you musn’t forget it now. Failure, coward... Killer. At that to your résumé. You killed your own friends, pulled the trigger the moment they joined you.

“Remember that while you spend the rest of your life in prison, boy, that you put your own friends to the sword-- if you even get the choice of staying.” He turned and left the cell, and the door clanged shut behind him. Enjolras was left to his reeling thoughts.

Failure.

Coward.

Killer.

Every life lost on that barricade had been spent in two names: The Revolution’s... and his. Most of their names he’d never even learned. All he had for them was a title: _Volunteer_. Men (and a few women) who had thought they could change the world in a day.

_did you see them going out to fight_

_children of the barricade who didn’t last the night_

_they were schoolboys, never held a gun_

_fighting for a new world that would rise up like the sun_

_did you see them, dying one by one_

_and where’s that new world, now the fighting’s done?_

He didn’t remember where he’d heard the song. Had Combeferre sung it? Some little gem of history, dredged up when he’d looked through the files of previous revolutions, the only memory of insurgents far too young to die-- like the friends he’d failed?

Enjolras had… he’d killed people. He’d snuffed their lives out. Not just strangers, people with lives and families and maybe a girl they’d never get back to-- those that he’d killed himself, shooting them or stabbing them or bashing their heads in. He’d killed his Friends, people he’d known and loved and laughed with. He’d watched them get drunk and laugh at each other, he’d stolen their food when he forgot to eat any of his own, he’d complained when they hacked his phone and laughed when it happened to someone else. He’d killed those friends. He hadn’t killed them with a bullet, but with his words: he’d led them on that damned crusade, and he’d let them fall to meet a goal that could never be reached. He’d killed them.

“Guilt’s a bitch, eh?”

Enjolras almost fell off the cot. The cell door was closed, but Courfeyrac was leaning against the frame. He looked exactly as he had before the rally: a little sweaty, face flushed with energy, t-shirt and jeans rumpled but clean. No blood. No fear. “Go away,” Enjolras said. “Go away. You’re dead.”

“So what?” Courfeyrac said cheerfully. “That never stopped anyone. Harry, Gandalf, Mama Stark… need I go on? Anyway, if I couldn’t be here… heck, I’d probably be here anyway. I’m a badass little rebel, remember?” He grinned. Enjolras shook his spinning head, unsure if the emotion he was feeling was grief or terror. “No, you’re not a little anything. You’re dead, I saw you die, they shot you from so close that you flew right off the barricade and there was a hole right through your chest, you’re dead--” he broke off, scooting as far away from Courfeyrac as he could. An image flashed through his mind: Courfeyrac’s face, still and cold in death, frozen in terror. “You’re dead,” he said again, as if that would make it any more true. Courfeyrac shrugged. “Yeah, so? The rest of us are, too. We’re just waiting for you.”

“For…for me?” Enjolras said. Courfeyrac nodded. “Can’t move on without you. You’re the Chief.”

“Not like that,” Enjolras said. “Not anymore.” Courfeyrac shook his head and smiled, detaching himself from the door-frame and moving towards him. Enjolras moved away, on his feet, pressing himself against the wall like he had moments before, except this time he was fleeing from his friend, not an estranged father. Courfeyrac’s face contorted. “What’s the matter, Chief?”

“Don’t call me that,” Enjolras said. “Don’t come near me.” Courfeyrac looked pained for a moment, then: “Fine, boss. But we’re not gonna be far. Not anymore.”

And he was gone. Enjolras slumped back onto his cot and buried his head in his hands, working his fingers through his hair. He was alone with his fracturing mind, and the voices growing ever closer.


	2. Survivor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enjolras has a visitor.

It took them a matter of days to transfer him from prison to an asylum. They didn’t even bother with a trial, not after one of the guards caught him screaming at a wall, and the video had leaked all over the internet. The government could almost forgive him for starting a rebellion when the public saw and thought-- oh yes, their glorious hero was nothing more than a raving lunatic. They transferred him without argument, without even a second thought. They loaded him into a van and trundled him away.

~~~

“I’ve finished this argument a hundred times, Pontmercy,” Enjolras grumbled. “And Combeferre has too. There’s nothing to say.”

“I know,” Marius said. “I just… like to revisit it.”

“Revisit it with someone else, then,” Enjolras said. “Aren’t there any other Bonapartists up there?”

“One or two,” Marius said. “But I don’t want to argue with a Bonapartist. It would be like… do you remember the time Combeferre and Courfeyrac debated a policy that neither of them liked, and of course Courfeyrac won because he was opposing it?”

“I remember,” Enjolras said. “Of course I remember. Courfeyrac quite literally tore it apart…” It had been winter, he remembered, and Courfeyrac had seized the document, torn it to shreds, opened the window (to loud protests) and thrown it out into the street where it mingled with the snow.

“You know,” he finally said, “sometimes I can hear you up there.”

“You can?” Marius said. “Yes, I can hear you singing.” “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Why haven’t I joined you yet? I should have. I should have died with you rather than rot away in here.” Marius didn’t reply, and Enjolras absentmindedly began to trace the shapes of the padding on the floor. Marius sat on the cot, leaning against the wall, clutching a bit of paper like it was gold. A letter from Cosette, he’d said, and when he said her name his entire face glowed like someone had lit a lamp behind it. Once Enjolras had sighed in exasperation and shaken his head when Pontmercy had talked about her. Now he just shrugged. He couldn’t get himself killed for her now, anyway. Not when he was

never mind.

The cell door opened, and Enjolras’s head jerked up. One of the guards stood in the doorway, and behind him one of the nurses. “Visiting hours,” she said. “You’ve got a guest downstairs, monsieur. Come along.”

Enjolras looked over his shoulder at Marius, who shrugged. “Go ahead, Chief.” Enjolras flinched at the title, then looked at the guard, then the nurse, and nodded. “Alright, then. Lead on.” He got up off the floor and started towards them, and they shifted back a little. The guard laid a hand on his nightstick.

“Oh, right,” Enjolras said. “I beg your pardon. First things first.” With a vague roll of his eyes, he offered his wrists. Quickly, the guard stepped forward and snapped a pair of cuffs around them. “Walk with her,” he said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“You and everyone else,” Enjolras replied. He stepped past the guard and followed the nurse out the door.

“Such a grand procession,” said a voice. Enjolras jumped, but didn’t look. “Go away. You’re dead.” The words came out automatically, the fallback phrase.

“Dead for you,” the voice replied. “Like all the rest of us. Sons of a damned crusade.” There was a hint of amusement in it.

“Don’t remind me,” Enjolras said. “‘Fraid I can’t do that. It’s in your head, so naturally, it’s in mine.”

“Shut UP!” Enjolras shouted, and the nurse jumped back. Enjolras spun around to see-- Grantaire. Unlike the others, there was still an ugly spread of blood across his shirt.

_(--Long live the republic! I’m one of them.”_

_“Keep the leader alive. Shoot him.”_

_“Grantaire-- No--”_

_Terror in the face of the Cynic, moments before shining so brightly--Enjolras dragged away--gunfire, and Grantaire tumbling away and out the window--_

_“You don’t believe in anything.”_

_“I believe in you.”)_

“No,” Enjolras said. “Go away.” _(Go away, you’re not supposed to be here, you’re dead--)_ “Dead for you, Chief,” Grantaire said with a dry smile. He took his hand away from his chest to salute, and it was covered in a glove of blood. Enjolras jerked away, colliding with the nurse. An iron grip closed on his shoulder. The ground swam. “Just get him down the hall…” Enjolras was half-led, half-pushed down a flight of stairs, along two more corridors, and into a white room with a big metal table. “Don’t let them in,” he mumbled. “Please, don’t let them in…”

The nurse blinked. “I won’t. Come on, have a seat.” Enjolras didn’t so much ‘have a seat’ as collapse into the heavy metal chair as the nurse unlocked his cuffs and fastened a new pair, these attached the the chair’s arms. “Comfy?”

“I doubt that possible given the situation,” Enjolras said, “But it is not awful. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” said the nurse. “Shall I let the guest in now?”

“I suppose.” Enjolras wondered who it would be. His father again, perhaps, begging him to “come home”. His mother, asking how he was, or Combeferre’s father, asking for a report.

The far door opened, and in stepped… Marius again. Enjolras felt the blood drain from his face. “You said you wouldn’t let them in,” he said.

The nurse’s face clouded. “What?”

“You said you wouldn’t let them in!” Enjolras shouted, straining in his seat. “I thought at least in here they’d stay away. You Said you’d keep them away, but he comes waltzing in here-- what happened to you, anyway?” He added to Marius. “Ten minutes ago you looked fine-- for being dead, that is.” He looked at Marius again, taking in the sling around his arm and the cane he was leaning on. The other man’s face had crumpled into an expression of confusion. “What do you mean, ‘dead’?” He said. “I’m here, aren’t I? Just like you?”

“Monsieur le baron,” the nurse said, “I believe you’ve heard of this man’s mental condition?” Enjolras turned to her in confusion-- how could she see him too?-- but Marius spoke again. “Yes, I’m aware. Psychotic depression, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” the nurse said. “One of the symptoms he’s contracted, it seems, is continuing hallucinations of those whom he believed… died in the riot.”

Believed?

Enjolras looked at Marius again, the truth crashing on him, even as Marius turned to him in shock. “Not--”

“You’re not dead,” Enjolras said softly. The irony stung his tongue. “How did you get out? How are you not in here too, or in prison?” The words tumbled out, even as the world spun beneath him, and for a moment he felt a glimmer of hope. Courfeyrac, Combeferre, Grantaire, Joly, Bahorel, Gavroche, Prouvaire… those he knew to be dead. But the others… “Did anyone else make it out? Feuilly, or Bossuet, or--” Marius shook his head. “I’m sorry, Enjolras,” he said. “my getting out in and of itself was a heavenly stroke of luck, and I wasn’t even conscious for it. I didn’t even know you hadn’t made it out until...” for a moment, what little color was left in Marius face drained. Then he shook it away. Enjolras sat up in his seat. “And the rest of it? How you got out? How you’re not in here too?”

Marius held up his unbandaged hand in pause. “Let me sit down first, please, Enjolras. It’s a long story.”

~~~

In the end, it all boiled down to a simple chain of events: Marius losing consciousness outside the barricade, an abduction by a strange savior, and waking up in the hospital under his grandfather’s constant vigilance. Monsieur Fauchelevent had visited him not long after, informing him that Cosette was safe (within France), and he was prepared to let the two of them continue their relationship… out of the shadows. (“You’ve been in a secret relationship with Corinne this whole time?” Enjolras interrupted, and Marius flushed scarlet before jumping to the next part of the story.) “She and I are getting married,” he said. “She and her father are safe from whatever they’d been worried about before, and Grandfather’s accepted me back in as an heir and paid a few folks off to keep me undercover. It’s… safe, now, I think.”

Enjolras nodded, feeling just a little better about the world for a time, knowing that, at least, someone had survived through his failures.

In the end, Marius got to his feet. “I’m glad you’re alive, Enjolras, but it’s… I can’t even say. How do you manage, going about all day with dead people dogging your steps? It must--”

“I don’t,” Enjolras said. “You do realize I’m in an asylum and not in prison.” He nodded to the nurse, who started switching out his cuffs. “I’m glad to see at least you’re alive, Marius, and I wish you and Cosette the happiest of lives and marriages. Just… please don’t come back.”

Marius’s face clouded. “What?”

“Don’t come back, Marius,” Enjolras said, getting to his feet. “It could lead to further implication, theories that you’re still supporting the insurrectionists, and that could lead to further ruination of your family’s life. You may write if you like, as it would be a welcome reach from outside, but don’t come back. Do you understand?”

“I--” Marius paused. “I do. I’ll respect your wishes on this matter. Goodbye, Enjolras.”

“Goodbye, Marius.”

Marius never came back.

And Enjolras did not see him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> painfully short, I'm so friggin sorry, but that's all I had... besides, that was all there needed to be, honestly. 
> 
> (nothing left to say, now)
> 
> Grantaire angst coming later, I reckon, once I figure out the lyrics to The Lightning Strike. So long~


End file.
